ideology unhappiness is impossible and horrible

If you're not even close to being competitive in the realm of tourism/culture, being the person who's first to pick an ideology is a real gamble. My first few games I rushed towards industrialization and quickly busted out some factories because I liked the idea of getting first pick of ideologies with multiple bonus policies. When going for a culture/tourism finish, that works fine. When you luck out and the tourism leaders follow in your footsteps ideologically, that works fine. When you end up with a minority ideology and you've been neglecting tourism and culture... that doesn't work fine, and switching ideologies negates a lot of the benefits you got from being the person who picked first to begin with, plus you hit the pre-switch speed bump.

I kind of think that if you're neglecting culture/tourism, you should potentially consider holding off on picking an ideology until the culture leaders have already chosen, or crush them before it becomes an issue. That's kind of a hassle because culture-focused AI feel like they're not typically swift in getting to ideologies (they aren't necessarily tech leaders and aren't necessarily prioritizing Factory construction even if/when they do get industrialization.)

haha i came here to complain the opposite. I can't get a city to flip because the AI has too much happiness. Even if I am CRUSHING the tourism and hitting the AI at -40 happiness, they still have plenty of extra happiness to avoid losing any cities.

A note to remember, the unhappiness from differing ideologies is dependent on tourism level.

For example, if I am Exotic to you and you are Exotic to me (keep it in context folks!), then there is no ideological pressure. However, as soon as you become Familiar to me and I remain Exotic, then the ideological pressure is increased from Content to Dissident.

If you bring your friend who is also Familiar to me, but I'm also exotic with, I gain another ideological pressure pushing to to the next level.

Culture slows the rate of another cultures influence on you, but you still need to have influence on them.

Pay attention to the culture screens, pursue tourism as needed, and acquire as many luxury goods, happiness wonders, and happiness religious beliefs if you wish to combat ideological pressure.

chazzycat said:

haha i came here to complain the opposite. I can't get a city to flip because the AI has too much happiness. Even if I am CRUSHING the tourism and hitting the AI at -40 happiness, they still have plenty of extra happiness to avoid losing any cities.

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This is why you still need a military. If you can just take one or two cities with resources their entire happiness drops and you win.
You know you can just drop a nuke on their resource tiles right?

yeah I get that, but I was going peaceful/cultural that game, war would have been counterproductive. I didn't *need* to flip the cities to win, I just wanted to see it in action.

I build every culture building and chose order ideology, after 5 turns i get -15 happy bonus. I changed to autocracy and lose all my points in order. Then after 6 turns i get -20 happy bonus again, lose major city and have resistance over all county. GG.
Terrible feature, i think its should be changed. Its anti-fun and stupid.

nanoswimz said:

I build every culture building and chose order ideology, after 5 turns i get -15 happy bonus. I changed to autocracy and lose all my points in order. Then after 6 turns i get -20 happy bonus again, lose major city and have resistance over all county. GG.
Terrible feature, i think its should be changed. Its anti-fun and stupid.

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haha, culture buildings. They are useless without great works/artifacts. The more you know

Whining about getting culturally bashed into the floor when you refuse to do anything about it, do you realize how silly you sound? It's like refusing to build an army and whining about getting your face smashed by Ghengis

adecoy95 said:

even if i wanted to do that, which i dont, i lose my specialist bonuses, im never going to do that, the last game i played was co-op the last two before that were single player, each time, 50 unhappiness, no matter how much i focus on culture and tourism. the ai always gets hundreds of it and i always linger just south of 40 in tourism, hell the first gamei played i had hundreds of culture per turn, but i was STILL getting dominated by the ai influence

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"I don't want to try anything different to exactly what I want to do at all times, and still expect to win."

Why did you post here if you don't want to take on any suggestions?

adecoy95 said:

i understand what your saying, but i am sitting down going, hey, i want to play around with the bonuses in the freedom ideology, and no game i have played yet, on any difficulty, seems to be able to let me, the combined pressure from all the other civilizations, no matter what my tech level, forces me to play with some other one i neither want the bonuses from, nor need the bonuses from.

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I too am fond of the Freedom ideology. I chose it in my last two games (which were actually my first two games) one on King and the next on Emperor (I am now working on an Immortal game). I was the only civ in both games to choose Freedom. My culture was such that I held the edge over my opponents, and I was able to manage the unhappiness. I got my culture going early on in the game, so by the time we were ready to choose Ideologies, it was already high. One way to prepare for the Ideology unhappiness was to focus on happiness through techs, wonders, allied CSs, etc. I also focused on getting a lot of specialists and specialist enhancing buildings. I was getting a tremendous number of the new specialist classes, which I placed in the appropriate buildings to generate tourism.

I am not bragging; I am simply trying to demonstrate that you can execute your Freedom strategy with proper planning. I don't know why you are having so much difficulty. You can still adopt Freedom if that is what you want to do, but you have to plan for the consequences, since it doesn't seem to be a favored Ideology of the AI.

It's what a culture empire do to you.

OP, are you doing artifacts hunts ?

(Also, OP, you should build a garden and a guild into three different cities).

For my part, as I have always been a relatively pacifist player, I'm able to utterly devastate my foes with cultural influence in late game.

(''relatively'' means that when I'm losing on culture, I send the bombers on the ennemy capital...)

I would like to ask the OP what type of victory are you pursuing? Because whatever victory condition you are pursuing there is a solution to this problem -

(1) Diplo - you should be controlling the world congress and can get your ideology voted in as the world ideology - this will immediately resolve your ideology problems.

(2) Culture - you will not be facing any problems from ideology since your tourism will be so high it is the AI who will be suffering from your cultural pressure

(3) Domination - Just wipe the AI thats in a different ideology off the face of the earth

(4) Science - you should be ahead enough in tech to build up enough tourism to combat the AI ideology.

All though, it is usually a good idea to pay attention to what ideology other civs are picking and play along so you can be friends, if not unhappiness is not the only problem you will have, the diplo hit is massive.

I'm sorry but you just don't seem to be playing the game right and blaming the game features instead. I play on emperor level and i am swimming in happiness in the end game. I cant comment for levels higher than that, but for emperor or below i know the problem can be solved / avoided.

adecoy95 said:

played several games now, and no matter what, the ai always wrecks me with ideology, causing me to get 40+ unhappiness, making end game totally unplayable, something needs to change

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It's like saying: "Every time I play, I get conquered. But I don't want to build any army. How can I mod the game so that the AIs have no armies, as well?".

Culture is very interactive now, and you cannot expect to win if you ignore it. I learned how to deal with this, and I am the one inflicting the unhappiness on the AI. It's not that hard, really.

Paradigne said:

The problem with taking a different ideology AND going high tourism is that all your opponents will hate you.

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By my experience, they won't still hate you enough to actually try and stop you, which is rather sad.

adecoy95 said:

digs provide a whopping useless 2 tourism, that's nothing compared to the 100+ the ai always gets, i usually sit around 30-70 tourism even in the latest era and am usually one of the last to arrive to it due to my crazy amounts of unhappiness.

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Well there's your problem. "Whopping useless". No, it's not. It's the same amount you get from Great Works, and if you consider them useless, it's no wonder you always get trampled culturally. You need great works, you need culture.

Besides, you can always opt to make the dig into a landmark which may be a lot better option for old sites.

Played only two games so far, both on Deity. First one I went full culture/tourism to check out how it worked. I had several culture wonders, destroyed my biggest opponents ideology-wise and ended up winning through Diplomacy. Culture victory was completely out of the question and impossible.
At one point I ran behind in culture vs tourism and started to randomly switch from -15 to +12 happiness, changing from turn to turn. Waging war under such circumstances is rather impossible.

My second game, I completely ignored culture and thereby was forced to go Order. No choices on ideology were possible for me that game.

I feel that this game mechanic is not good because it simply put is not at all fun, and it just doesn't work very well. (Especially since an AI with max penalties still has 70 happiness on Deity)

The mechanic certainly needs refinement to reduce random "swings" like that, that's for sure. Also agree on AI happiness, even on Prince and King they manage to remain in the black while having "civil resistance" or "revolutionary wave".

VainoValkea said:

The mechanic certainly needs refinement to reduce random "swings" like that, that's for sure. Also agree on AI happiness, even on Prince and King they manage to remain in the black while having "civil resistance" or "revolutionary wave".

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There are tools to attack their happiness. You can nuke their luxes, as somebody said, but you can also embargo them. You can conquer a big city and gift it to the AI. Etc.

Isn't the entire point of tourism being able to exert unhappiness on wrongbelievers without acts of war like nukes? Embargoes don't decrease their happiness either, at least not directly. To be honest, I don't even know where they get all that happiness. Typically the AI has over 15 and even 20 happiness on the "People who like to smile the most" while I'm still way below 10 early in the game. Even on moderate difficulties like Prince and King.